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MyVisionTest News Archive

Feb 28, 2008

AMD raises stroke risk
People with age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of severe vision loss, have double the usual risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke, Australian researchers reported on Thursday.

They found that for people under the age of 75 when the study began, those who developed early age-related macular degeneration had twice the risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke within the next decade.

People with the late stage of the incurable disease at the start of the study had five times the risk of dying from a heart attack, and 10 times the risk of dying from a stroke, Paul Mitchell of the Centre for Vision Research at the University of Sydney and colleagues found.

The researchers do not know what is actually triggering the elevated risk but said one explanation may be that the eye disease is simply a sign of older age when people are more prone to heart attacks and strokes.